With Philippe Coutinho’s Barcelona release clause set at £400million, where does he now rank in the top ten?

Cristiano Ronaldo, Lionel Messi and Gareth Bale all make the list with their astronomical fees, but where does Coutinho sit?

Feature

By Dave Fraser

7th January 2018, 1:56 pm

Updated: 7th January 2018, 2:46 pm

PHILIPPE COUTINHO finally got his wish in landing his £145million move to Barcelona this weekend.

The Brazilian star, 25, had hoped to leave in the summer, but Liverpool's stubborn rearguard delayed the move by around six months.

AP:Associated Press

Philippe Coutinho has a whopping £400m release clause in his Barcelona contract

However, the La Liga giants announced they had signed Coutinho on Saturday evening - inserting a £400m release clause into his contract.

While that fee seems utterly ludicrous, with the world-record transfer fee "just" £198m - set by ex-Barcelona forward Neymar when he moved to Paris Saint-Germain - it is only the tenth-highest in the world.

But who are the other nine? And just how expensive are those at the top of the pile?

Somewhat unsurprisingly, Real Madrid have made their top stars near-impossible to buy in recent years.

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Cristiano Ronaldo has the joint-highest release clause in the world at £886m

In fact, eight of the top players are from Los Blancos - including Cristiano Ronaldo and Karim Benzema, who are joint-top at an astonishing £886m each.

To put that into context, any club wishing to sign the Galacticos duo - should the club not accept an offer - would have to spend over FOUR times as much as the current world record.